Men of Stone
by Guardian54
Summary: Some stories tell of heroes and villains, becoming legends told and retold through generations. This forgotten tale of Guns, Germs and Steel is not one of those stories. Yet knowledge, some hints, will remain. Others will follow the path that she lit. All Remnant will be home to our people... again... (Part 1 of the Mandate of Heaven Trilogy, NOT Maiden Amber)
1. I Have Never Fought, Nor Shall I

**A/N:** This is a rewrite of "The People of Sparks", hopefully with less Mary Sue characteristics by showing more screw-ups and painful injuries. It's not nearly as fun as the preview scenes because there is only a certain quantity of awesome that a peasant can have (without getting assassinated in less than subtle fashion) until they discover the REAL conflict and embark on real upward social and economic mobility.

Be warned, the main struggle here will be human versus human. Everything else is an afterthought, though Salem will play a large part in the storyline. Then again, if I ever wrote an Attack on Titan fanfic I would go for the "The ruling class created the Titans to herd the peons into manageable spaces" angle. That means exactly what you most likely think it means for the origins of the Grimm.

* * *

Chapter 1: I Have Never Fought, Nor Shall I

 _Mistral City General Hospital, August, 595 AD (After Dust)_

"She'll beat it, somehow…" that was her student, it sounded awfully unsure though… and there was a nurse, maybe, saying something, then the door closing. Well, she wasn't surprised, given what she could dredge up of the last mission in her mind… the stabbing disjointed pain below her knees was a good hint as to exactly what went wrong given those memories…

"Status?" She croaked out, feeling a straw being put to her mouth and pulling in some water for her parched throat. "Thanks."

"There's enough left that you can afford the highest quality indirect adaptors." Well, that was good, her student knew well that she hated the idea of direct adaptors for their risks.

"How many limbs left?" She could still move her fingers, or she thought she could, and they didn't hurt too badly, and there weren't localized pains on her skin self-awareness, so that probably wasn't an issue…

"They managed to save a bit below the knee in both legs, your arms are fine though."

"Fuck, that's going to take at least a year to get over. Am I healed enough to move on my own yet?"

"Yes, they've fixed up everything else. I blew all our pay from the summer missions and winnings from the Tournament on it." She didn't mention the portion of her Marshmallow Flakes contract money she'd burnt on the healing.

She managed to peel an eye open, looking at the true redhead in the room "I'll pay you back someday for it."

"You've taught me more than enough that I can't ever repay you for, it's—"

"Good attitude there, you know what I mean, right? Lots of friends that way, though I do wish you'd have just had them heal me to being able to recover on my own. This is gonna be really, really expensive…"

"Maybe it's time to just quit risking your life for money."

Amber laughed humorlessly as she looked over at the girl she'd mentored since she first came to Sanctum for high school "Pyrrha, what other marketable skills do I have that can bring in a better income in this crap-sack world when I'm just an average girl? What trade or professional schools can I afford, particularly with the shortage of opportunities compared to the number of people who aren't willing to be on the front lines? There's no going back… put me in for external adaptors with bone reshaping to even out the pressure, please."

"I already did for the bone shaping and nerve reconstruction, because I was certain you didn't want anything interfacing directly with your nervous system, and your parents signed off on it."

Amber stared up at the ceiling, thinking about the costs she'd examined before when discussing some of the occupational hazards with her mentee. "You used some money that was just your own, didn't you?" Because there was no way she could have touched Amber's admittedly very large nest egg. Even her parents wouldn't have that authority unless she died or became vegetative. Speaking of which… by the clock, her parents would both be at work right now, which explained their absence here.

Pyrrha grimaced "It's my money to do as I wish with."

"Correct application of forcefulness, standing up to pressure, very nice."

"You're just teasing me out of frustration, I recognize this move."

"Are you not the same?" Both young women chuckled. "Looks like I'll have to defer Beacon then." For obvious reasons.

"I'm still surprised you got in at all without an Aura, since, well…"

"I know, these things happen easily to us. But other things come easily to us too, you know this well."

"How could I forget? You showed me amply on day one of my being assigned to you."

Amber grimaced, thinking back on how the Bounty Office had refused to pay her as much as they should have due to not believing her solo claim. Pyrrha's word had counted for little as she was just starting at Sanctum, and the disasters that had been Amber's first two participations in the Regional Tournament, High School Circuit, probably had something to do with the Bounty Office's standard reaction to her walking in—not that that would be quit the same anymore given prosthetics—being… _wait…_ "You didn't order any prosthetics yet, right?"

"No, because I suspected you'd want to build or modify your own."

"Good, that's a relief then. It's a lot cheaper and I'd know my equipment better, important even for someone with my combat style."

"You're unusually talkative."

"Been silent for… how long has it been, Pyrrha?"

"Two weeks since I brought you in, one week since the infections forced amputation."

"I've been silent for long enough, and talking is helping me fend of hysteria, so… if it gets too annoying, go home or go on another mission. It's good to have more money sitting in the bank just in case, and we both know…" Amber trailed off, leaving unsaid the current state and prestige of the Nikos family.

They spoke at length, talking about their last mission and the landslide it had ended in due to Amber's usual methods of making things explode until the problem was solved backfiring on her unexpectedly. After Amber's parents arrived, Amber immediately demanded that they do the paperwork for her to be released due to how much healing Pyrrha had paid for from their partnership funds.

The younger girl would go back to school in the fall, leaving Amber with a rather final and fatalistic-sounding "Thank you, for everything."

Amber's response to the closed front door from where she sat on the stairs of her family home was a light chuckle and "You know me too well, Pyrrha… you know exactly the right buttons to push."

Sure, Pyrrha still visited occasionally, but she kept things social instead of mostly being about business, rather unlike their past interactions. Perhaps Pyrrha too thought Amber would be better off changing jobs, but such was the way of the Gifted, or as they called themselves, Aura-users. They could not really understand, even if they were aware of the Ungifted masses, how the Ungifted were stuck to the lower rungs of the social ladder. The average humans were practically invisible, nameless, and just more collateral damage statistics to be written off by the Gifted and their social class of the "Hunters". In this world, the Ungifted were below even Faunus in status, because at least the Faunus were all Gifted who had tapped too far into their powers and picked up adaptations, or were descendants of the same. Such was why the White Fang were feared now that they had decided to speak the only language of power, the language of force.

Amber Stone was not content to just be a nameless statistic for the rest of her life. There was exactly one path to climb the social ladder for an Ungifted. She had to join the Hunters, and ideally marry into a wealthy, high-ranked Gifted family. Of course that latter part was patently impossible even as a minor concubine given there were plenty of women out there who were vastly better than her in physical and mental appeal. Her former mentee Pyrrha Nikos as a prime example. For the ambitious, reality was a mere stumbling block that existed to either be overcome or, sometimes, casually overlooked for mental health purposes.

Amber Stone considered herself ambitious, and so that was exactly what she was going to do.

* * *

 _Flight to Beacon from Vale City Center, Kingdom of Vale, 597 AD_

 _Clank, clank, clank, clank…_

"I'll ask you one last time… why?" Pyrrha Nikos said to her fellow freshman, the source of the clanking of metallic hooves on the boarding ramp.

"This is the path I chose, I have no others."

"That's the same damned thing you told me when I visited you in the hospital for every damned one of your crashes!" Pyrrha was usually a lot more soft-spoken, but toward her old mentor who had been obsessed with risk avoidance when they had previously worked together, she could be quite angry indeed. "You know full well you could have gone into engineering or something!"

"The only real money in engineering is Dust-related, and you know full well that that's restricted to Aura users for safety purposes." There had been a number of accidents in the second century After Dust which made Aura usage capability mandatory in Dust research facilities, because any explosions or other issues could be safely contained. There were intermittently still other incidents that had to be cleaned (mops or hoses often required for splattered body fragments) up, caused by freelance researchers operating outside the law and doing something stupid.

Pyrrha let out a disbelieving laugh while putting away her carry-on suitcase and stowing her backpack under the seat in front of her "Given _you_ engineered those legs after somehow getting schematics from Atlas combat droids and military-standard prosthetics?"

Amber slung an arm over the girl two years younger than she was—though that would mean basically everyone on this flight—once they'd strapped themselves in "Ah don't say it so loud, Pyrrha, I hear the Schnee Dust Company heiress is starting this year with us, don't want to annoy her over perceived rule-breaking, even though it was through perfectly normal channels." She was not lying, because it was not exactly abnormal, though legality was another matter entirely.

"So how did you get the data?" Pyrrha probed, gently, leaning closer to keep it quiet.

Amber smiled "Bah, external imagery, sales brochures, and such were enough to figure out the math myself!"

"I swear you keep making me think your talents are wasted in the Hunter business."

"Aww, Ren, look at that! It's so nice to meet a young man and young woman so publicly affectionate with one another!" An orange, white and pink colour schemed girl said loudly, while putting her rather tired-looking companion in a headlock and forcing him to look at the two ladies already seated.

Amber kept her opinion of the misidentification suppressed. "Ren, was it? I think your girlfriend wants you to be more affectionate when you are together in public."

Nora released Ren's head almost instantly "Oh we're not 'together' together, it's just that we've been together so long that… uh, that didn't come out quite right… but my name's Nora Valkyrie and this is Lie Ren. What are your names?"

"Pyrrha Nikos is the beautiful young lady I have the good fortune to be with, and my name is Amber Stone. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance." They shook hands.

"Oh we should really be getting to our seats soon. See you later!"

"See you later then!" Amber kept the smile up, looking down the aisle out the corner of her eye, until she saw them settle down in a row of seats considerably behind her. Then she slumped back in her seat and pulled her arm back from over Pyrrha's shoulder, thinking.

"You alright?"

"This is the first time I've managed to pass myself off as a man in public. I'm actually quite impressed… the only difference from last time is a few more scars and wider shoulder pauldrons… and a haircut to fit more comfortably in the helmet. Well, looks like I've settled on some of the more detailed parts of my appearance then."

"Be careful of the two-to-one ratio then, you don't want any girls to be mad at you for being dumb enough to be duped."

Amber chuckled "You mean the fact that there are two women over the age of twenty-five per man?"

Pyrrha frowned "I thought it was twenty?"

"That was before I started working as a teaching assistant, they still haven't revised the textbooks to accommodate the work I did at Sanctum and the ripples it made. The ratio below twenty-five is currently about one point seven women per man, just because guys still tend to be the ones dumb enough to get themselves killed far more. Still, because everyone has a mother and a father, the reproductive success of both groups will be the same, which means the ratio at birth should be about one to one. It's testament to male pride or perhaps foolhardiness that it gets skewed that far that early in a human life expectancy."

"I don't think the settling down part of your life plan will work very well if you keep up that opinion of men, even asides the general air you throw off."

"Ah, girl talk is different than public speaking. And I don't think my odour, body, breath, or otherwise, is nearly so bad as you seem to be saying, hah!"

"Hold still for a moment…" Pyrrha leaned in particularly close and took a couple sniffs "Yep, same scent as when I first met you, nitrocellulose, weapon grease, and steel. Yeah that general air isn't gonna help…"

Amber laughed "Be careful, Pyrrha, I'll know where you live… and you wouldn't want to give the men… fresh men, literally… the wrong impression, do you?"

"Anyone who can't be bothered to accommodate an imposing, scary companion of mine isn't worth my attention anyhow." And anyone too stupid to decline the company of Amber's brand of firepower was dumb enough to be worthy of the receiving end if Pyrrha's memory—which was quite good—of watching the Mistral Regional Tournament, High School Circuit, back in Grade 7 and 8 were correct. There was something to be said about managing to fail at the finals only due to excessive collateral damage. Then there was the later rounds when Pyrrha came along, where thanks familiarity with her style the older girl kept getting trounced by her mentee due to not using the more lethal tricks she could have easily pulled off.

"I think you should have added 'scarred' to that" Amber pointed at the diagonal cut from over her left eye to her right cheek, where it stopped just short of two parallel claw marks that traced along the edge of her jawbone, then at the tear mark directly across the bridge of her nose, and a gouged patch in her left cheek. Without Aura she had to rely on technology for comparable effects of hovering and such, and it had a much bigger signature, but it should get her out of a jam often enough to be well worth the crashes during thruster pack manoeuvring practice. "Oh hey, there's someone who likes wearing his armour even during his time off." She noticed a blonde boy across the broad central aisle, a boy who was wearing the core pieces of a set of armour, though he didn't look so good, to put it politely. "I swear everyone else seems to rely on their Aura as a crutch around here…" She groused, looking up at the people chatting at the front of the room "Unless that red-caped girl has armour under that, there are so few people who have any damage endurance beyond their Auras here."

"I do remember what you said about my outfit back when I settled on this style."

"I remember it well too, I think it was something on the order of 'you fail armour forever', a reference to the trope of 'you fail physics forever'?"

Pyrrha smirked, focusing her vision on the blonde boy sitting on the other side of the aisle because focusing on Amber would be too close for comfort "Exact words… well, exact phrase, but whatever."

Amber turned her head "Looking at the blonde over there now that I noted him? Well… not necessarily a bad choice, good-looking, and if my information on this year's Beacon entering class is correct he should be the son of the Arc family if that sword and scabbard at his waist is any indication." Most of the people who preferred carrying their weapons around with them were standing, but not this particular young man… "An influential family, very famous, although not very wealthy, not bad at all… and he has seven sisters so he should be well used to appeasing women and catering to their wants. The way he carries himself suggests he's airsick though, which is not good for a Hunter… but the lack of overdone musculature suggests he's not too macho, which means he's unlikely to exploit the sex ratio too much and take much of a harem despite his family name and reputation. All in all, he has the Amber Stone Stamp of Preliminary Approval so far… you should interact with him and if he does turn out to be a Mr. Nice Guy then that would be great! You were shy before, so I'm not sure you could rein in assertive men as much as sometimes necessary…"

"Amber?"

"Yes?"

"You're rambling again on one of your mad matchmaking schemes. Please don't live vicariously so much. He doesn't look bad and if he turns out nice enough I'll socialize with him and see how things go, but let me deal with this at my own pace, alright? I'm not the nervous high school freshman you met four years ago in the lobby of Sanctum and welcomed cheerily to the school… and you're not the same Manic Pixie Dream Noob that you used to be."

"…Sorry… though I hope my less old moniker of the Mad Sempai still lives on?"

"That depends on how many helpful upperclassman-like things you manage to pull off in our first year at Beacon."

"I guess I'll have to work for it then. Of course, you'll also have to work at convincing people that you and I are not a couple, heterosexual or otherwise, before you can actually make a move…" Amber jerked her thumb in her lap toward the increasingly nauseous-looking blonde across the aisle as an example "and if whoever you're interested in makes a serious move beyond a resigned 'ya know, I had a crush on you, but I see you're happy enough with so-and-so' while they think you're already with someone else… well, you'll have learnt something important about them. This may be good or bad depending on interpretation, and depending on how they view your current relationship."

"You're great at analysis of these things, though I'm surprised given you behaved even shyer than me about boys back in Sanctum…"

Amber snorted, since the claw marks on her right cheek and the gouge on her left, along with many of her other scars, were certainly not from after she lost her feet "Could you imagine me making a move on one of those boys, given the one-point-seven to one ratio and my lack of a working Aura?"

"No, but I can imagine what the team you might end up with would think of it… which means I should try to make sure I'm on your team."

"Hopefully the team selection process is less random than pulling names from a hat… though I couldn't find anything when I went rummaging around their computer systems… except that Professor Ozpin was impressed with my preparations and would let them slide."

There was a lot to be said about rigging traps around the perimeter of the Emerald Forest, commonly nicknamed "Tutorial Forest" by Beacon students. First, and most importantly, it was a hell of a lot safer than Ozpin had originally feared when he agreed to let a certain maniac attend Beacon. He'd been worried she might use nerve gas or something and the wind might turn the wrong way, like how her second participation in the Mistral Tournament had gone. Though in that case it had been a fire, set in the forest chosen as the arena for free-for-all finals, which had gone completely out of control and managed to clear a good portion of agricultural land—and slaughter thousands of Grimm—that Mistral soon took advantage of.

As for why it was a free-for-all final, the stadium they'd used for previous years still hadn't been fixed after half of it was blown up, set on fire, and so on. Being unpredictable and having a penchant for over-preparation was good, especially now that she'd settled down a bit after that landslide and no longer used such flashy moves. Ozpin had been agreeable to her admission based on her immense capacity for massive damage against the Grimm… and also because she was mostly harmless in PVP when not given any time to prepare or plan. This meant less chance of destroying the duelling arenas during combat training… or maybe a good excuse for Ozpin to ask for funds for renovations, he wasn't sure.

When you got to be as old as Ozpin, unpredictability was truly the spice of life. This particular deranged lunatic had more than enough of it to make for a good show over the next years. "I'm hoping the initiation in the Emerald Forest won't be another 'Magical Exploding Forest of Doom' as you pulled in your second Tournament."

"During the summer the Emerald Forest is a restricted area, to give the Grimm a chance to bulk up their numbers again for the students' training purposes. I couldn't get in, but that didn't stop me from dealing with them from outside the perimeter."

"…Did it have something to do with the wildfire I heard about on the news a month ago?"

"Too bad there was a storm at the wrong time, or I could have burnt down most of the forest and the Grimm in it. Fortunately I used cheap accelerants that time, so I didn't lose much on funds, because the bounties were out of reach."

"So you spent the summer break for Beacon kids pretty much camped out around the Emerald Forest thinning the ranks of the Grimm in it, huh? You should have invited me to the fighting."

"What fighting? I didn't participate in any fighting…"

Pyrrha frowned "You must have fought the Grimm, a lot, to survive out there. I know how much negativity you carry within you."

"I don't have an Aura, remember? They can't sense me by my emissions, only by smell or sight. And about fighting… You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

"Oh, right, your first lesson to me." Pyrrha facepalmed at forgetting the line of _"I cannot teach you how to fight, I can't fight myself, as you saw well in the arena where I was being trounced. I can only teach you how to lie, trick, steal, and whatever else, so that at the end of the day you are the one going home alive and in as few pieces as possible, while the other guy does not."_ Unfortunately for their mentorship, Pyrrha had proven extremely adept at conventional fighting and wasn't so good at learning unconventional methods, though she at least learnt well how to counter them.

Amber patted Pyrrha's hand at the girl remembering. In the meantime, she herself was acting rather stupid and childish, namely eying another blonde jealously. Her particular target had a big, fluffy mane, got away with having no bulky, heavy armour as part of her usual wear, and was standing near the front of the airship, in the gallery area. Most importantly, she made Amber annoyed that she had to rely on stim packs to survive in the past often enough that she was flat as a washboard… "I'm glad you remember."

Bah, she would think on more important things for now than the fact that she was actually mistaken for a man today. There was no point caring about it, even though she knew full well that her value would only decrease as she got older and should really work on catching a decent boy's eye as soon as possible, before the other women acted. Trying to appeal to men by showing off her intelligence and abilities could come later, and took a lot of time to take effect.

Hmm… Maybe she could convince Pyrrha to make them a sort of a package deal. After all, Pyrrha was the type of girl most of the families that weren't at the very top tier would be glad to have as a bride. Having a famous Huntress (as she hopefully would become) as basically a chief maid and home manager of sorts, with a bit of mistress duty on the side, was also prestigious. Of course, maybe it might just be better to not try so hard, because of the Law of Inverse Attraction, which seemed to hold just as true in reality as in the shows her mother was a fan of…

Ah, whatever, they had to survive Beacon first before being concerned with anything else. Oh wait, that was also a problem with the Law of Inverse Attraction. Hmm? Wait… why was the blonde boy from across the aisle coming over to them while looking shiftily around? Uh oh…

"You guys know where the bathrooms are on this shuttle?" Well, they hadn't been near the usual places when Amber and Pyrrha boarded, and so it was apparent the boy hadn't noticed, or hadn't read the safety brochure that should have been sticking out the back basket of the seat in front of him…

That was a relief. On the other hand, the boy vomiting on her as she manhandled him, down the hallway during a patch of turbulence was not a relief. He had looked really quite sick and stumbling about was slower than desired, so Amber basically hauled him along. There wasn't enough room in the aisle to manoeuvre easily with three people, and Amber had reminded her ex-mentee that her outfit allowed vomit to run inside if the boy actually puked.

"Good thinking." The boy had said, before actually throwing up across the front of her armour, though she dodged enough that it only splattered her leg and aroused protest form those around the area… followed quickly by a mass exodus to the gallery area up front.

This was bad, because awkward encounters often led to other things, though this was at least a lot less cliché than ramming each other at a street corner with toast in their mouths. At least her armour was sealed and easy to wash off, though the acrid smell would last until she could give it a better wash than tap-water cupped in her hands and rinsed off over the toilet in the exceedingly cramped bathroom. Only one of them had fit at a time too… so there was plenty of puke that had run down her leg onto the floor before she could bend him over the actual toilet, despite him containing the subsequent torrents until they got there.

"Ah, I'm sorry about that… here, my water bottle should help with the cleaning… I'm Jaune Arc, thank you for helping me, miss…" Well shit, he even realized she wasn't a man, despite her build!

* * *

 **A/N:** There we go, set up a quick early (one-sided, with how badly Yang pummels Amber in spars) rivalry and meet a new future mentee. We should hope Yang doesn't decide to participate in a prank war, of any type, anywhere at any point during the evolution of this story, because other than when she's recovering from maiming, it would hurt, a lot.

Please Review as to your hopes for which path this might follow. This includes very important events such as Penny and Pyrrha's (apparent) deaths, and how well Team ATKN ("Attacking") performs when matched against other teams in training arena battles. This mostly depends on how far Amber cheeses those battles, which should correlate with how well they do and how she does socially (respected training fanatic, try-hard failure, or accursed cheater are some possible labels). However, they MUST not perform so well as to displace any other team from the Vytal tournament… so even if they're somehow good enough to be sent theirs would be the off-screen matches at best.

I am not in favour of sending them, given Amber's history with arenas of all types during decisive matches may or may not stretch up to Amity Coliseum.

REVIEW (especially with advice on how to thoroughly avoid Sue territory while still remaining interesting)!


	2. Crash-Into Hello, Hopefully Averted

**A/N: THIS IS DEFINITELY NOT MAIDEN AMBER FOR THOSE UNSURE!**

In the Previews (that I have taken down), Amber Stone was noted to have grown so notorious that the Empire's last AI's last action before the Crutch of the Brotherhood (well, he goes by Cain, or Kane, but that's because being the literal namesake of "crutch character" was something he LOATHED…) destroyed it (upon it revealing itself) was to make sure that "Monte Ohm" (That timeline's counterpart to someone I hope is obvious), who dared scry back into the distant past and recount history in a highly modified fashion, even completely editing out Team ATKN (called TANK at one point until I decided to conform to first-letter leaders), was assassinated for planning for anyone by that name. In fact they made sure that the first character of that name introduced died too, horribly.

As a side note, 597 After Dust corresponds to something in the neighbourhood of 120,000 BCE by our calendar.

* * *

Chapter 2: Crash-Into Hello, Hopefully Averted

 _Beacon Academy, September, 597 AD_

"I'll be alright, go on without me…" The man croaked out between bursts of his bodily fluids being forced from his body.

Less dramatically, One Mr. Jaune Arc was once again worshipping the porcelain throne… though the toilet on the plane was most certainly not porcelain, nor was its room big enough to serve as anything throne-related except maybe as a storage cupboard, for a fairly small throne.

"If you say so, Jaune." Amber said "Look on the bright side, it'll be a good way to meet more cute girls for a nice guy like you to introduce yourself to!" She was completely sincere, but it came out quite a bit more awkward than intended. They should really cut their losses and run while there was still time to do so "See you at the opening assembly!"

"That's a good joke there." Jaune said, gasping a few times to see if anything more would come up "See you at the assembly then."

They were ten meters out of the airship when Amber ducked behind a column with her luggage "Only son of the prestigious Arc family, and so far from what we can observe a genuinely all-round decent guy. That balance is unrealistic enough that he probably has some confidence problems somewhere. Help him fix them and we'll be in his good books for life, not a bad choice for a first boyfriend prospect for you. I need to observe further, you go on ahead if you want."

"And you're going to observe how with those metal hooves and the obvious and imposing armour…? Ah…" She watched Amber stripping off her shoulder pauldrons and hip guards, stowing them away in the one full-sized suitcase she had, before pulling out a set of padded soles and slipping them onto her hooves. Having feet was nice and all, but her distinctive digitigrade configuration allowed longer jumps and running strides, despite inferior rough-terrain stability. She hadn't built in enough features yet due to budget limitations despite regular hunting expeditions. The rest of her stuff was in her carry-on suitcase and backpack. Then Amber put her helmet, which she previously hadn't worn, on for anonymity… and brought out a handheld sound collector, holding it ready for use. Hopefully her shoulders would seem sufficiently less broad without the pauldrons to be less than obvious… despite still being obviously barrel-chested and broad-shouldered, and very tall.

"Your hair is too conspicuous like that though, Pyrrha, I advise putting it in a bun instead, and also wearing some less distinctive clothes." Amber commented, wondering if her former mentee had adopted any of her advice over the past two years or not. Pyrrha detached the red mini-cape from her hip clasp, and shook it out a couple times to reveal it to be a red T-shirt… which she put on. Then she spooled her ponytail around her circlet until she ran out of hair. "Uh, isn't being a red-shirt a really bad omen for some historical reason?"

Pyrrha frowned, thinking back on a possible reference, before looking down at her miniskirt "Well, at least these aren't brown pants to go with a red jacket, right?"

"Too true, unless that black is actually just a very dark brown…" They shared a chuckle as they watched other students disembarking "There's the Schnee heiress, I believe, one of your fans. I remember when she met you after the last Tournament I was in, she thought I was too destructive and unrefined… until you clarified our relationship."

"Your diction needs more work than ever after two years of working pretty much completely alone, Amber." The word choice really, really sucked for someone as desperate for a boyfriend as Pyrrha's old mentor.

"…You're right… Anyhow, Weiss Schnee wasn't bad at all. She changed tacks to noting that my combat methods were still highly effective, even though they do a lot of collateral damage when I'm not allowed to completely dictate the engagement. She seemed mostly worried about the destruction of assets and damage to property, which is a good trait for someone born into high society, it means they understand that material things have value instead of the 'we have reserves' approach of self-centeredness. Being on a team with her probably wouldn't be too bad. She can also introduce us to some high-ranking young men… even though most of them will be completely unacceptable due to sheer size of ego. Not to mention they wouldn't accept me." She swallowed, the larynx bump visibly moving up and down in her neck. It wasn't as pointed as a typical male (about 90 degrees, while Amber at 110 degrees was closer to a female's 120), but years of using stim packs intermittently had stimulated its growth enough to be visible.

"Well, there's someone who seems a bit klutzy… and I'm amazed that her blonde friend just ditched her on arriving." Pyrrha noted, watching the caped red-and-black-themed girl spin, stumble and fall into someone's luggage cart—who the hell brought that much luggage anyhow?—after her blonde buddy ran off with a mob of her friends, buffeting her into losing her balance. Then… apparently she upset Weiss Schnee, who didn't realize one of the Dust vials she was waving around for emphasis was cracked already, and… "Amber, how well would your armour withstand a Fire Dust blast like that?" They were listening to the chatter by way of ear-bud and helmet internal speakers respectively.

"Without anything on the other side my armour wouldn't even notice, just as not even their clothes are singed. Hell, I could probably just wear my helmet and that quantity would still not hurt when set off on my skin with no enclosure of space, and I doubt the flash of heat lasted long enough to do more than singe loose threads on my clothes" The helmeted girl responded. "I see that Miss Schnee is taking her nerves at starting at a new school, far from home, and defying her father's probable wishes that she go to Atlas, out on someone who happened to inconvenience her."

"Well, there's Jaune, being Mr. Nice Guy and all with the red cap girl." Pyrrha said, avoiding the topic of why they'd both come to Beacon, in Vale, instead of staying in Mistral. They'd both wanted to avoid their celebrity status back in Mistral, though Amber's was a darker matter of, as she'd said before… _"I don't want my former fans to see what I've become. Let the seemingly-ever-cheerful Manic Pixie Dream Noob fade slowly from memory instead of dying a quick and horrible death by Reality."_

The two followed after Jaune semi-casually after he helped one Ruby Rose up and was recognized as "vomit boy". They pretended to be taking a leisurely stroll while the two in front of them talked, before finally reaching the auditorium after some time (and a side trip to the luggage room to drop off their carry-on luggage). Then they ducked into a corner to quickly discard their disguises.

"Hey, wait! Ah, great… Where am I supposed to find another nice, quirky girl to talk to?"

"And there's our cue, except I'm not quite ready yet." Amber said, still stooped and having obvious trouble

"The padded soles a bit tight?" Pyrrha lent a hand.

Amber grimaced as they pried one off and began to work on the other "They wouldn't stay on over rougher terrain at a run otherwise… you should go ahead and engage him in conversation now, this would prevent anyone else from occupying the Arc scion's attention. I can join you later." Then she looked at Pyrrha's irritated scowl and realized she'd said the wrong thing.

"I didn't leave you as ordered to die on that mountain, and I'll be damned if I can't sell us as a package now, however nice the guy." The younger girl growled.

…Never mind then, Amber had said exactly the right thing, cajoling Pyrrha into thinking of the two of them as a package deal without even trying. Wonderful…

Thinking back on the idealistic mental deathtrap she'd had to pull Pyrrha out of to get this far was distinctly not wonderful and unwanted at this moment though. Amber shooed the thought away, instead wondering on what Pyrrha might ask for in return. First Wife privileges were obvious, but what else? No one helped anyone else without a reason, even if it was just to feel morally superior or at least morally warm and fuzzy inside. Hopefully Pyrrha at least remembered that lesson from back in the day… unless she was going to hang this over Amber's head for a while? If so then she had learnt well… or Amber was grossly over-thinking this and Pyrrha just felt like repaying her for quite so many lessons and so much money made with Amber's tutelage.

In peripherally related news, Mistral had a (ecologically) dangerously depleted Goliath population compared to ten years ago. This was due to the effects of Improvised Explosive Device maniacs stalking their migration routes since the day Amber got old and strong enough to bike out with a trailer holding a drum filled with chemical explosives and topped with a large metal pan. The second such IED user started four years ago, upon learning from the first that it was a much faster way to farm cash at the Bounty Office than any other option. There were rumours of another in Vacuo who had taken up the habit a few years later, but that didn't concern Amber.

…Wait, thinking that was probably a horrible idea. It most likely raised the probability of her encountering said explosive user at Beacon to somewhere around one.

Oh if Amber knew exactly how bad being genre savvy was…

* * *

Amber scoffed as they entered the ballroom "What has Headmaster Ozpin got in that mug of his, exactly? He said that we need to think for ourselves more instead of just blindly obeying instructions and regulations… what is he getting at, when Goodwitch told us on the flight here that this is a time of peace? All that is needed to maintain the status quo is to basically stick to the rules, initiative is only needed in times of great conflict, or a major push of some sort against the Grimm…"

"Maybe they're planning for an offensive in a few years since we haven't been ravaged by recent or ongoing war?" Pyrrha suggested, unrolling her sleeping bag while watching Amber tuck her inactive thrusters in at her sides, then settle her armored back comfortably against the wall. She was used to her friend's austerity… in fact she was grateful for it given it had more than once saved them from being ambushed out in the wilderness of Mistral. Of course they wouldn't have been out in the wilderness at night if not for farming cash via killing Grimm without the use of Aura, but that was beside the point.

Sometimes, Pyrrha wondered why Grimm killed with Aura usage evaporated so quickly that it was hard to find the few bits that didn't do so and thus prove one's kill. Sometimes she thought it was just to make the jobs and lives of Hunters harder. Most of the time she was just grateful that Amber was so damned good at slaughtering the beasts of darkness without using Aura and taught her some of the myriad methods. It sure made their lives a lot easier thanks to the large, steady income… and she suspected it would have done even more for the male to female ratio among the youths of Mistral if the boys had been better learners.

Maybe if Pyrrha had been the advocate instead, they would have listened better to a prettier face… She yawned, wondering what it would have been like if the boys hadn't been too intimidated by the two of them. Then again, maybe intimidation wasn't the right term. Being socially inept enough to interpret "playing footsies" as an under-table sparring session with only one's legs and then planting a solid kick into a boy's crotch didn't help Pyrrha's approachability, at all, for obvious reasons. She'd learnt fighting dirty from Amber, but maybe she should have listened to Amber more on sexual education instead of brushing her off…

That night, Pyrrha had a nightmare about her approachability by men. It began with giving oral to some guy with a general body build and coloration (e.g. hair, skin tone, etc.) not unlike her mentor had before her maiming, back before she became a hulking brute. She wondered during the dream—she knew it was a dream, but couldn't affect it—if she was wishing Amber was male, because she was only attracted to men but apparently admired her mentor greatly enough to do this sort of thing. Her efforts to identify the blurred face of the unknown man ended when he suddenly screamed, until his scream faded into ended up a silent wheeze of running out of lung capacity, as he fell backward. She looked down and watched her dream self as she wiped her face from the spray of blood from having bitten down and ripped away with all her neck and upper body strength, shoving him away by the hips. The dream ended with her being thrown in jail for aggravated assault, shaking uncontrollably as the glyphs in the cell draining her Aura activated, and the other inmates stalked toward her, licking their lips, hands reaching for—

"PYRRHA!" Amber was glad she was smart enough to wear her helmet when waking her former mentee. She was also glad she was quick enough to jump back from the punch, letting it glance off her helmet. The younger woman had practically exploded out of her sleeping bag after Amber grabbed her shoulder and (after much effort) shook her awake "…Looks like you'll need a new sleeping bag."

"What…" Pyrrha looked back "Not again!"

"What was it this time? Another cold, lonely death as a villain? The landslide?" That had been the last couple times Pyrrha had nightmares

"No, it was about my social ineptitude with men."

Amber grimaced "A symptom of the Attractiveness Isolation trope, probably, unlike what I'd diagnose if I had such a dream, hah!"

Pyrrha laughed, because it was better than dwelling on her dream "Have you seen your intelligence, innovation, strength, and social aptitude? Do you not remember my telling you about the first and last time I played footsies, back at Sanctum?" It had been during Amber's recovery and she'd laughed her ass off on hearing of it. "I just had a dream, where I was giving oral, and I bit the guy's dick off, then I got jailed, and you know what happens to girls like me in jail."

Amber blinked at her former mentee, then rubbed both hands to her face in the silence of the early morning. Then she very slowly lowered her hands enough to look down over said hands at her ex-student"…Pyrrha, you do realize that loudly stating you had a dream about biting a penis off, in a room where the guys who are basically going to be most of our date prospects for the next four years and are all awake because of your commotion, is a stupendously bad idea?"

They both turned around to look over the room from where they were, near one of the side walls. Every male in the room, which was completely awake due to the yelling and thrashing, not to mention the loud tearing of sleeping bag fabric, suddenly looked very busy with other things. "I think I've just doomed myself, and you by association, to being the old cranky lady with 9001 cats." Pyrrha commented, loudly, trying to defuse the situation. The nervous, rumbling laughter from the male population was most discouraging. Then most of the room tried to go back to sleep, including one Lie Ren.

Then that particular young man's eyes snapped open as his mind decided to self-destruct by imagining what his lifelong friend and (according to public opinion) girlfriend could do to him. He thought of her finger being pushed into a certain part of his anatomy (not intended to accommodate the passage of anything of such diameter), complete with her trademark "BOOP!" This meant that when Nora finally woke and tried to rouse him from his blank staring at the ceiling, she had to remove him from the chandelier due to his sudden panic. Ren also had to recruit help to keep Nora out of peeking on him in the shower for a while, since she was wondering if he had any Faunus traits and was intent on checking for a tail, as he'd taken shelter by chandelier and ceiling.

While the others were trying very hard to get back to sleep, Amber thought of something… "Hang on, Pyrrha, I need to go negotiate something with Professor Ozpin or Goodwitch." She returned shortly afterward. _They said they paid me quite enough already for the "Vale Summer Massacre of 597" as they referred to it, and that this is part of normal course work, so we only get to claim ten percent bounties…_ She typed on her laptop, which only she and Pyrrha could see, then deleted the text.

Pyrrha raised one eyebrow at her, then gestured outside toward the locker bay. Once they were out, watching the sky start getting brighter from its nighttime darkness through a window, she asked "Why the secrecy?"

"Anyone too dumb to find out for themselves, their share is better spent as the school's bounty funds. You and I however know how to do better than that… and I know there's at least one more, one more like me, an Ungifted with a penchant for explosives."

"That would be me." The two looked up to see a young brunette woman who was buckling her mottled green and brown camouflage helmet on. "It was nice of you to leave me one side of the Forest, so that we didn't stumble over each other's traps. So bounties during Initiation are acceptable, huh…"

"Only ten percent though." Amber told the new guest, who nodded "Thank you for not intruding on our sides of the perimeter too! So, equipment's your usual day wear too?"

"Well I don't have your heavy power armour, but yes. The uniform regulations here ARE lax, don't you think? Nutmeg Sanders, I'm a fan of yours, unless I'm extremely wrong, Amber Stone?"

"At your service, and this is Pyrrha Nikos."

"The lucky lady you mentored, huh? Well, Pyrrha, I'm hoping I can be on a team with you two, and hopefully the Schnee heiress too for funding if we don't have enough time to farm Grimm for bounty cash… what's so funny?" The other two had burst into laughter.

"Are you Ungifted?"

"…Yes?"

Pyrrha paused in her mirth to explain "You're just like Amber was four years ago, but more serious and mature! Even the general outfit is the same!"

Amber hummed "Well, there's no combat shield, but the armored torso, forearm guards, camouflage clothing, and helmet with an air filtration system are similar enough, though my weapons were a shotgun-rocket launcher hybrid and a sniper rifle, not two assault rifles. Your general build seems similar to my old build too." Losing feet meant a great loss in potential mobility, so one had to make up for it in other ways, namely improved strength and firepower.

"Actually this here is a battle rifle, longer range, higher impact, but more recoil if not for the reduced rate of fire." Nutmeg patted the longer weapon on her back. "And yes, I focused on speed, endurance, and general mobility training… instead of what you seem to have shifted to since your accident. I must say that that armour looks quite good on you, and sturdy too if it's powered as I strongly suspect. So who do you think Pyrrha should try to recruit for a fourth squad member, if you'll have me?" The brunette girl stuck her hand out, and Amber noticed upon shaking it one of the differences between them so obvious she couldn't believe she'd missed it on first glance. Nutmeg was much shorter than Amber used to be, and the discrepancy now was even greater if Amber stood with her prosthetics straightened out. It had been the large difference in hand size that had drawn Amber's attention to the matter.

"With the dangerously high mortality rate of us Ungifted among the Hunters, of course we should stick together. Our fighting styles would fit together well in range coverage, and our alpha strike mentalities would cooperate well in dishing out the pain. Pyrrha is good at general combat and can be our front-line fighter or lookout while we dole out the damage, and for a fourth member I'm thinking of either someone with really strong defences, or someone with a lot of funding or prestige. Either the Schnee heiress or Arc scion would be good choices. What is your input?"

Nutmeg chuckled "This is a test, isn't it? But I suppose it is fitting after I introduced myself initially as a fan… and indirectly by more or less imitating your techniques, complete with the 'danger, keep out' signs…"

"If you prefer to think of it that way."

"Well, team leadership is almost certainly going to Amber, unless Ozpin wishes for the shyest of us three to gain command experience."

"It really does feel like I'm talking to a mirror, almost…" The older woman said, still grinning.

"Hah, it's like I'm talking to an older, wiser, but also ruder counterpart of myself too, you know… So, the Arc family are renowned for having the label of 'Paladin' in video game terms. They usually have a combination of area-effect Aura techniques that help buff everyone around them, and very strong defences. Even we Ungifted benefit greatly from them. There are other candidates. For example, I know the Electra heir is an overachiever in healing techniques, and we'll surely get injured a lot due to our frailty. He would be a good addition to the group."

"Electra huh? Well, I'll keep an eye out for him if you show me a picture. I presume you also exploited the back doors they put in the Beacon databases, most likely as a test for promising students?" The Stone and Electra families had interacted back to before the discovery of Dust, but they had diverged since that point, the Stone family sliding down the social ladder while the Electra family stayed near the top. The main reason Amber even knew of this was because she liked reading history books… and reading between the lines.

"No, it's because I'm from Vacuo, in the west, and he is too. I knew him from high school. We weren't even close in class ranking due to all the regulations they copied from Sanctum for spars." Nutmeg shot Amber a glare for being responsible for most of the regulations "But I knew him in passing despite almost always getting pummelled. He was one of the medical team members during his whole time there, healed me a good bunch of times too, until he got so good that he was usually called off to the worse cases and his friend Talon, from the Hawke family, took over taking care of me whenever I got beaten up."

"Sounds like a bit of personal history there, and two decently prestigious families too…" Amber shared an eyebrow-waggle with Pyrrha. Since she didn't have nearly the prestige—infamy was another matter—of the younger woman Amber could talk a whole lot more without worrying about public image.

Nutmeg stared at her past idol "You sound boy-crazy. Please never sound boy-crazy."

"It's a bit necessary after I wrecked my face this badly, this many times." Amber said.

Nutmeg shrugged "Still disturbing though given your reputation as an engine of destruction."

* * *

"Aww yes…" Amber hissed to Pyrrha as Weiss approached.

Once she greeted all of them, she seemed mostly interested in talking to Pyrrha, so Amber and Nutmeg scooted over to give them some distance. "About that… Show me the money, I'm guessing?" Nutmeg whispered, referencing a video game cheat code she'd used in the past. "Don't we all have enough stashed away from Goliath farming and other bounties, or tournaments for Pyrrha?" IEDs were most excellent for taking down the hulking beasts, preferably coupled by high-powered landmines that blew off a limb or two and knocked them down on top of the explosives first if there was no liner involved for an explosively formed penetrator. Otherwise just one large-diameter charge was usually enough to blow a big hole in the side and kill the creature, or multiple charges to blast several holes.

"You think we'll be able to go out often enough to keep up with ammunition expenditure and armor repairs? Now we should act like wallflowers and just observe… a black sheep wall to be specific." Amber showed she'd gotten the reference.

"You've put a lot of thought into this, haven't you?" Nutmeg smiled, it was good to have someone so similar to herself, who understood her and who she could understand.

"Well, there goes Arc, not a bad choice either for our fourth." Amber noted instead.

Soon enough, Jaune was gaping in shock as Pyrrha noted "…Yeah, it was pretty cool. Sadly, the cereal isn't very good for you."

"So, given her friend and ex-mentor Amber helped advertise chemical explosives and is likely to be in her team here, do you really think that you have a chance of making one of the two remaining slots on Pyrrha's team of four?" Weiss said contemptuously.

"Did that packaging show up in Vacuo as well?" Amber asked Nutmeg very suddenly, annoyed at Weiss bringing up one of the few advertising contracts she had been offered. It was one she regretted, mostly due to the number of idiots who mishandled chemical explosives, thinking they acted like Dust did, and then got mad at her endorsement.

Nutmeg deduced Amber's opinion immediately from her asking and tone "Yeah, had our fair share of imbeciles too. Chemicals don't work like Dust, so honestly I think they deserved it for being too dumb to learn proper use… the collateral statistics, on the other hand…" She sneered in anger at the system's treatment of the Ungifted who made up the overwhelmingly vast majority of humanity.

"Would all first-year students please report to Beacon Cliff for initiation? Again, all first-year students report to Beacon Cliff immediately." Deputy Headmistress Goodwitch interrupted their chatter over the PA.

"Let's go then…" Amber rose to her feet and performed one last check on her thruster packs and back-up parachute pack. As she passed by where Pyrrha had pretty much reflexively pinned Jaune to a wall by his jacket, Amber pulled Pyrrha's spear out and handed it back to her friend "Nice meeting you, Arc, but remember that No means NO, alright?" She patted the boy on the shoulder before straightening back up and marching off after Nutmeg, who'd already proceeded.

"It was nice talking to you again, Jaune." Pyrrha said, before trailing after her mentor and their new friend.

* * *

 _A brief time later…_

"…That being said, the first person you make eye contact with after landing will be your partner for the next four years." Ozpin said, to cries of dismay until there was a sudden blanket of silence… her turned around to see what happened.

Glynda Goodwitch had demonstrated that she did, in fact, have a sense of humour, by pulling out a crate of sunglasses and setting them on the ground with a rustle. Ozpin blinked in surprise as she pulled one out of the box, and put it on "Deal with it." She said, smirking, hinting at the actual reason for Ozpin's policy, namely to make people be able to deal with others of all types and forms, because a team unable to work together regardless of who they were working with would surely fail.

The students all laughed and grabbed sunglasses, storing them away for use after deployment. Hopefully they understood the hidden lesson well though.

"You got your radios readied up, Pyrrha, Nutmeg?" Amber asked into her helmet mic.

"Indeed" Pyrrha answered.

"Affirmative" Nutmeg's less familiar voice stated.

"Ahem, after you've partnered up, make your way to the northern end of the forest. You will meet opposition along the way. Do not hesitate to destroy everything in your path… or you WILL die."

"Ozpin!" Goodwitch barked at this diction.

Ozpin was annoyed at Glynda interrupting him again… then realized exactly what he'd said "Oh, right… please do try to avoid burning down the forest if it is at all possible though, thank you very much." For some odd reason, starting four years ago, there had been a noticeable increase in the number of forest fires set in the Emerald Forest during Initiation, assuming it had been dry enough to actually catch. Well, Ozpin knew exactly who the reason was and that she was standing in line on the launch platforms, but pretending ignorance was less headache-inducing when it came to the possibilities of massive property damage, general chaos, and lots of chemical explosives. Given the fandom still smoldered… that meant this year there would be LOTS of explosives.

"I am so very glad that these platforms have inertial dampening, otherwise we would not launch worth a damn." Amber commented, before her platform fired under her. Her legs bent… and that was it. All that happened was her abruptly spilling forward onto the grass with a squeal of complaining metal joints. Then the next student was launched just fine.

Nutmeg jumped off her platform, since she'd been further down the line. "THESE DON'T WORK FOR UNGIFTED?"

"Ah, it seems I forgot something when updating the facilities…" Ozpin grumbled. Actually, it was because the Ungifted were so uncommon at Beacon that they weren't accommodated for. After all without an Aura all the platform would do to a properly crouched person was probably sprain their ankle, or spill them forward on the grass. They'd then have to make their own way down. "Rest assured that they should not injure you regardless."

"Yeah, well, there was no mention as to whether we had to land after launch or otherwise, the firing of our launch pad is the beginning, so…" Nutmeg pulled out her actual Plan A for landing strategies, since Initiation was commonly known to be done off Beacon Cliff, namely using a hang-glider, then took a running start toward the cliff edge to bridge the ravine that was right in front of the Beacon Cliff, then kicked off.

"Well I'll take some time to do a bit of maintenance since the launch stressed some servos, sorry." Amber said.

Ozpin sighed, it had been so much easier back when the last few Ungifted good enough to come here came, they'd had gear that dealt with inertia and such well enough that they could pass for Aura users in terms of getting hurled over the side… or had been inept enough at standing posture or survival equipment that they'd been thrown over the cliff into the ravine and died. Apparently the Arc scion wasn't so incapable of Aura—despite faking his records—that he was part of that last group though, as his Aura allowed a smooth snap-launch.

"Looks like I've got a late start." Amber grumbled after checking her legs, before folding her thruster pack's wings outward, orienting the thrusters appropriately, locking up her armour and pulling her main landing gear (combat shield with some wheels attached) off its slot on her back. Then she laid her belly along it, holding on with both hands, and blasted off over the side of Beacon Cliff head-first with thrusters at full burn, controlled by the external adaptors for her legs reading nerve impulses.

"…The wheeled skateboard, combat shield or whatever that was undercarriage being used for the launch is evidence that the Mad Sempai as they called her years back at Sanctum is still as insane as ever." Ozpin observed, before taking another gulp from his mug.

Unfortunately, the thruster pack had a much higher stall speed due to wing area and lower loiter time even in hover mode due to fuel constraints than Nutmeg's hang-glider, and the trees were another problem. Nutmeg collapsed her hang-glider in mid-air and opened up her parachute upon spotting a potentially suitable landing zone, a lake in the woods. Unfortunately it was too late for Amber to change course and she slammed through the central hole in the chute, tearing the reinforced border and causing the fabric to shred itself, and rammed straight into Nutmeg's backpack, causing her to drop her glider into the trees before a quick grapple and roll let them flop down along Amber's relatively flat back plate, throwing up a huge splash of water as they skidded across the surface of the shallows and came to rest, before both clamouring up again, untangling and gathering up the parachute cords.

After they splashed down on the shallow lake with Amber's back at the bottom, both girls agreed it was at least a better crash than the typical Crash-Into Hello trope, since both were interested in men only. On the other hand they took a bit of time to locate Nutmeg's hang-glider. Nutmeg spent some of this time cursing the expenses that would be incurred in replacing many of her electronic devices due to the uncontrolled splashdown, until Amber agreed to reimburse her. Fortunately, Amber's electronics still worked and thus they still at least had communication with Pyrrha, who had apparently just saved Jaune Arc's sorry ass. Given the need to save him, Amber began to doubt the utility of the Arc scion as a team member. Still, they had to rendezvous with Pyrrha… which was a problem as they weren't nearly as far into the forest as everyone else.

* * *

A/N: Pyrrha is not ONLY an example of Attractiveness Isolation, but also other tropes about social ineptitude.

REVIEW REPLIES!

 **Mr-Dr-Prof Sweetness** : Why thank you for saying the pilot is attention-grabbing! You might want to consider using the alert tool instead of favourites, by the way, if you want to get email notifications… It is plausible that Jaune is capable of recognizing her as a woman because of his sisters' varied traits, thanks for the idea. Your estimation of Amber's characteristics are about right… though I think I forgot to note her towering physical size (which is deceptive).

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	3. This Is the World We Live In

A/N: I do not believe it is too implausible to fall asleep thinking about how bad you are at socializing with men, and then have a dream where you commit the ultimate faux pas in terms of interacting with men. I also think that **Pyrrha's currently questioning her relationship with Amber** and whether they should actually be on the same team if she can have a dream about maiming what she thinks is basically a male version of Amber _that badly_. Then again, I'm a man and I felt absolutely nothing writing that passage, so my mind is a little wonky… Fortunately, Jaune's mind isn't. That is part of why he didn't get charmed by Pyrrha easily in this version of the story.

Funny Quote/Action of the day from Amber Stone: "I once read a comic strip that claimed girls' inner arms are as soft as their breasts. I am displeased that thus far it seems reasonably valid by my observations." She then flexes her arms and thumps her chest a few times.

* * *

Chapter 3: This Is the World We Live In

 _Emerald Forest (AKA Tutorial Forest), September, 597 AD_

"I'm going to try to summon up some Grimm." Nutmeg said after half an hour of walking north, after retrieving her hang-glider (Nutmeg seemed pensive about her newest piece of equipment "You know, I think this frame could work well if I changed things out to have gun barrels instead… yes, either a supporting heavy machine gun, rotary or otherwise, or a heavily braced armour-piercing weapon, firing saboted ammunition…") and Amber's landing gear slash combat shield, which she'd dropped in the forest shortly before slamming through the brunette's parachute.

"That would have been a useful technique to know when I was farming them for cash." Amber said.

"It's very simple. You just say 'it's too quiet'." They walked on, with no Grimm showing up. "And if it doesn't work quickly enough, you just wait for someone to be derisive toward it working, or the group lets most of their guards down, and Grimm are sure to show up!"

"That's hardly summoning, Nutmeg, it's more like the number one rule of all excursions, you know as well as I do that tempting fate is never a good idea, until it is."

"No pain, no gain? I'd have thought you didn't believe in that crap."

"No risk, no gain is more correct. I guess we overdid thinning the horde around here a little too much." Amber grumbled, similarly bored "Although since we're roughly equally bored, we'll definitely run into something soon!"

Unfortunately, Fate was unkind, and their boredom lasted for over half an hour. When it rained, it poured, and in this case… "How the hell is there still an Ursa pack this large in a forest area this small? This is impossible!"

* * *

Ozpin watched as the two exploiters dealt with an Ursa pack that Bartholomew and Peter had helped manoeuvre into the forest earlier that morning. The effect on the forest of the summer hunting had been devastating and would have rendered Initiation quite boring without some… help.

There were other reasons why the herd had been put on a collision course with the two most brilliant Ungifted he had seen since the White Fire. Thinking about that woman led him to take a look at the drone footage of her daughter, namely the new partnership with the current generation's Silver Eye wielder. The old rapier still looked the same, though the girl had been too young when her mother had been killed to remember its name properly. Interesting it was, that Mere Tenacity was not used by Silver's eldest. Equally interestingly, the older sister who remembered her mother much better had allowed the younger brat to pervert the name, but perhaps it was better this way. If Beacon was any fuller of defiance, then The Powers That Be would probably be nervous about it, and about Ozpin…

The Silver Eyes were another matter of heartache for Ozpin. But that was a story for another time.

* * *

Nutmeg roared as the underslung grenade launcher of her assault rifle cycled again, before she let it dangle in front of her chest and grabbed her battle rifle with both hands. She stabbed the longer, reinforced gun's bayonet into an Ursa's underbelly in a slide under the charging creature and sent it flying past her via a hard pivot against the ground. Then she grabbed her assault rifle off where it was slung across her chest, ramming the barrel up its anus before yanking back on the trigger, just to make sure it bypassed the carapace. The creature did not begin to get back up, which was enough for Nutmeg to duck past another swipe by another Ursa and ram her battle rifle into its shoulder joint before firing down through the gap in its carapace, affixed by its bayonet before she yanked it free again.

Meanwhile, the steady deep boom of Amber emptying her shotgun into target after target and the crunching of the thinner carapace plates under a trench knife stood counterpoint to her staccato bursts and slick bayonet manoeuvres. Then there were far more dramatic manoeuvres, such as what Nutmeg spotted now… "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" she yelled as she shot off the last grenade in the magazine slung under her assault rifle and it blew an Ursa's head to chunks.

"Double-ended blowtorch, buy time to reload." Amber explained in brief as she jabbed the end of a rocket toward an Ursa's face, causing it to rear up roaring in pain and giving her the chance to blow its brains out using her pistol.

Solid-fuel rockets had advantages in terms of simplicity, which made them good for disposable uses like rocket launchers. They however had little control. Once they ignited, they would burn until they ran out. Since the warhead with its attachment joint section wasn't screwed on, this rocket was now spewing out exhaust from both ends rather violently like a double-ended blowtorch. The armour on Amber's hands allowed her to handle the casing of the device without thermal injury, and the plumes of flame were exceedingly effective at forcing the Ursa to back off by invading and scorching the weak-spots between their carapace plates. Even opening their mouths in her direction in any sense seemed to be a bad idea as she kept shooting them down one by one with her customized pistol.

The recoiling block of Amber's pistol was more balanced forward on the weapon than typical, which made good sense when one wanted to handle their weapon in all sorts of awkward circumstances and couldn't have it recoiling back beyond the rear end of the weapon. Brass casings ejected with each shot just in front of her middle finger, with the weapon's grip and magazine section standing upward, secured by her thumb and index fingers. The weapon's main body was wedged into place by the middle of the rocket tube, held in her last two fingers, and she kept warding off Ursa with the rocket and pistol combo, because the rocket spewing from both ends was functionally totally recoilless. The blonde's left hand was occupied jamming another clip into her shotgun before yanking back the charging bolt, bracing the stock against her inner thigh plates, before couching the weapon against her belly plate and resuming firing the weapon.

In the meantime Nutmeg once again let go of her bayonet-less assault rifle, which practically functioned as her sidearm and if not for the design would be a submachine gun by length. She ducked under a swipe—the claws raking at the ceramic of her helmet after cutting a gash in the camouflage fabric wrapper—and drove her battle rifle into the side of that particular Ursa with her full strength. She twisted the blade to ascertain its place between the creature's ribs before pulling the trigger and punching bullets out the other side of its chest cavity.

The creatures' carapace was too dangerous in terms of ricocheting bullets to fire full-auto at, despite her good aim. _Amber must have been insane to use a shotgun, even with a combat shield, against Grimm in the past given all the ricochets she'd likely get…_ Nutmeg thought a moment before her eyes flicked to a piece of very specifically shaped metal that bounced past her almost lazily, after smashing against an Ursa's carapace and bouncing off. _Wait a second…_

"Are those sabots?" She hissed after they finished off the last few Ursa when the Grimm tried to flee, shooting them in the back. A few got away though, just in case the Grimm were smart enough to try to lead them into an ambush.

"Shotgun is probably not a good word for my weapon, portable cannon is more like it. As you probably know, saboted ammunition only works properly with chemical propellants instead of Dust-based ones, so it's not commonly used thanks to environmental regulations making chemical propellants relatively expensive. It's very useful however, especially fired from a smoothbore weapon, for punching through armour or carapace that no Dust-based rifle can hope to penetrate, but which is too light to warrant an explosively formed penetrator or explosive particle jet weapon like the rocket launcher configuration." Amber said, pulling out another ammunition box for the gun to show the distinctive look of the ammunition "The ammunition weight and capacity are awful compared to Dust-based weapons though, so it's not very good for long engagements. It's part of why I always seek to control the battlefield. So… even split of the money we get for these?" Amber gestured around as she tucked that ammunition box back into her belt, before removing the bayonet from her gun. The trench knife, especially with her armour's hydraulics and joints backing it was good for stabbing through carapace light enough for most living organisms (other than exceedingly large ones) to move around with, but it was just about useless for cutting things. Habitually though she only stabbed relatively weak plates, since that was how she'd fought with the weapon before in emergencies, before her switch to power armour… or back when the armour was less reliable, during the prototyping months.

Nutmeg nodded, removing her battle rifle's bayonet too "I'm amenable to that, though annoyed it's only ten percent that we'll get. I need to bandage up my injuries, so can you harvest the proof?" She had a few scratches, and grimaced as she noted Amber's meta-backed ceramic plates did not even have obvious scratch marks from glancing impacts, with only a few pits and scrapes from direct blows "I'll ask about the particular make of that ammunition later, when I'm re-engineering my new hang glider, for ammunition commonality. So… no names for your weapons?"

Amber was busy cutting out the relevant body parts from the corpses without even looking, due to excessive practice out in the wild earning her tuition and upkeep costs when her peers had all been training in the arena and such. She spent her attention on scanning around for threats and checking to see if her helmet audio rig had calmed down enough from the sounds of battle to actually pick anything up properly yet in the high-sensitivity receivers. Perhaps she needed to debug the software configuration or improve the amplitude mitigation and other such equipment, again… "No, yours?"

Nutmeg, as a fan of Amber's and fellow Ungifted, had been out in the field almost as often, instead of sparring in the arenas, due to not liking being beaten up "Nope."

"…This might be a bit awkward when it comes to match announcements then."

"I remember when you were asked at the Tournament" Nutmeg was of course talking about the Mistral Regional Tournament, High School Circuit "to provide a name at your first final match… and they got angry at you because the viewers complained afterward that they were too dumb to realize that 'My Boom Stick' was your sarcasm over the pressure to give a name before the Final match began."

"I think they were more upset over the repairs the stadium required once I was done with it, too upset to be bothered with something that minor… though they did make a couple comments to that effect… I think…" Amber shrugged, as she stored away the evidence of their kills.

"Indeed they did. Now that we have some blood on us… we're going to draw them like flies, no?" Nutmeg said as they began walking north again, being as quiet as they could so that they could hear threats coming. Amber had picked up on the Ursa pack earlier, but they hadn't gotten out of the way far enough to not be spotted and attacked. Either that or someone was herding the Grimm toward students as a test.

Amber grinned, while rummaging about in the backpack that supported her combat shield—which she had not used in the fight, leaving it on her back to protect her thruster pods and wings—until she pulled out what was a soft dose of stims by her personal dosage requirements. "There won't be nearly enough in here for us to run out of ammunition or stamina. Here, one of my custom formulated stims if you need it. Just tear the casing off, stab it into your thigh, and jam down the plunger, it's what I consider a soft dosage so should be perfectly safe for you assuming you are over fifty kilograms and have no pre-existing conditions of any type, and don't use it often."

Nutmeg snorted upon reading the label "It's a glorified, slightly customized epinephrine pen." She was rather impressed, since it seemed Amber wasn't just an engineering and technology expert, but also good enough at biochemistry to mix together drug cocktails too. Then again, you didn't get into Beacon while Ungifted without being exceedingly exceptional… also known as completely nuts. "I'm guessing your body mass is well over a hundred kilograms? I bet the Schnee heiress wouldn't be able to handle this safely, hah!"

"…Well, my 'soft' is about seventy percent of my combat dose, but yes, I do have a body mass over a hundred kilograms. Muscle is really heavy, and trying to keep enough fat reserves to have regular periods was always a constant struggle, one I haven't been paying enough attention to in the past two years, which has saved me both time and money. As for Weiss… don't say that, Pyrrha might have broken her radio or something, so we don't know who she's rounded up, it's just static for some reason." _Jamming, perhaps?_ "If it's Weiss… we don't want to irritate her straight off the bat. Though I do agree that with her frame and build it is possibly she doesn't pack enough biomass for it to be safe enough for her to use. I will have to create a half-dose if she is our fourth member… or if we end up with someone similarly lightweight."

"If you don't have regular periods, and you think it's due to body fat, aren't there other nasty health consequences?"

Amber shook her head "None of those problems have begun to show signs to date, so I should be alright as long as I pay more attention to putting on fat once I'm back in school. It's a lot cheaper than birth control pills." The pills were not exactly cheap, due to encouragement of having more children, due to the danger of the Grimm potentially overrunning humanity. As far as Amber was concerned, it only led to more overcrowding, squalor, and persistence of poverty in the slums that existed in every "Kingdom". HAH! As if they were even worthy of the name with how they were really only city-states, with minor outlying secured regions such as certain islands (such as Patch Island). They were hemmed in on all sides by the Grimm, but were not actively pushing outward to reclaim more land for humanity for unfathomable reasons.

Amber hated the current state of affairs, but as training to be a Hunter was the best she could do at the moment to change things, this was what she would do until an opportunity she determined to be superior showed up. Mistral for example had expanded into a whole new district and built a preliminary wall around the outside-facing perimeter already, thanks to her employment by their Ministry of Forestry after that incident back in the Mistral Tournament of 593. Setting a wildfire during a free-for-all in a dense, dry forest was something only she was nuts enough to do, apparently. Maybe she could similarly force an expansion for Vale that was less intensely stupid than Mountain Glenn. Given how much public support had to be mobilized before Mistral expanded into the lands she'd single-handedly cleared (Read: burnt to the ground, then burnt and exploded some more) that would likely be a lifetime's work…

Amber's brain hurt just thinking of how stupid it was to expand into an area like Mountain Glenn with lots of underground caverns and not connected to the main territories by surface. In such confined quarters Grimm had an inherent ambush advantage over Ungifted, unless they were using flamethrowers with oxidizer as a second nozzle stream. They were also better off against Hunters than above ground, and could redeploy their forces quickly should Grimm have any coordination to them. It had been as if Vale wanted its people to be scared into being hemmed in by the city walls by a colossal defeat… but she would wait on a bit more evidence before taking that conclusion. It wouldn't hurt to ask Nutmeg out here in the forest. If they were going to listen in, then they would listen in on their dormitory too… "Nutmeg, why did you choose this career?"

The brunette did not look at the blonde, scanning about for threats instead "To make a difference, humanity needs to expand to survive, and to expand we need to push back the Grimm, as quickly as possible. We need more people on the front lines than just the Gifted, a hell of a lot more, to make headway against them."

"Sounds like a good reason to get rid of you quickly then before your views can spread, because it'll bring down the value and wages of Hunters everywhere, Gifted in general, actually." Amber joked, looking pointedly toward the sky at the drones sure to be overhead.

* * *

A considerable distance away, Ozpin facepalmed at the sight of the armoured woman's visor pointing up toward the sky accusingly. This was because she was not looking in even the general direction of the drone circling over the two girls. However, she was right, Ozpin knew that full well. The problem was that the Councils knew it too… and they were too short-sighted. Ozpin had had to manoeuvre a great deal to get where he was now, where there was at least some chance of influencing the path of humanity after the disastrous Great War eighty years ago. The lies about the Great War that were told filled and poisoned his ears every day… but Ozpin had to soldier on, even as he watched beacon after beacon of hope be snuffed out. It was maddening, to be headmaster of a school whose very name conflicted with its actual purpose.

Ozpin also recognized the words and look for what it was, a test… for him, Ozpin. If they met something overwhelmingly strong by any normal Aura-user's standards of judgement, they would have an answer. He was sure at least one of the resourceful "Ungifted" (Ozpin's mind contributed with _PFFT! HAHAHAHA…_ right about here) women had something somewhere in the Forest that could handle whatever he could potentially think of perhaps barring one of the dragons of legend. If they received that sort of response, they would most likely withdraw from Beacon and go out working as Hunters with a basic license instead. They could probably manage to rack up enough infamy to influence policy, as Amber already had in Mistral, and make disappearance or death be exceedingly suspicious. Such a thing could very well touch off yet another world war as tensions between expanding nations reached a boiling point, regardless of if it was too much expansion by everyone, or sabotaging someone else's expansion.

Ozpin activated one of his communication channels "Peter, let the Beowolves do whatever they want, stop herding them toward the exploiters." Maybe that was what they were trying to exploit?

 _Wait a second…_ He thought as he watched Nutmeg stop and dig something up from between the roots of a tree, using a sizable shovel that looked quite dangerously sharp and axe-like. _When the hell did they have time to store ammunition and supply stashes in the Forest?_ It was monitored well by drones in the summer to ensure no enterprising students decided to completely cheese the Initiation ceremony which used the Emerald Forest each year. They had found a good loophole nonetheless and exploited the tendency of Grimm to wander out to establish larger territories per pack. However, the forest was not monitored not nearly so much during school years, including winter break.

Ah, that explained it… but wow was that a long time.

* * *

"Good work with the resupply… but I'm picking up a wide-angle transmission of some sort, most likely down into the forest from a drone overhead. Too encrypted to decipher at the moment" Amber hissed after turning her radio transmission functions off and gesturing Nutmeg to lean closer.

Nutmeg frowned "A teacher is likely somewhere within a kilometer or so then, probably re-stocking the Forest after what we did to it over the summer." Grimm didn't reproduce nearly that fast, so that Ursa pack earlier was quite frankly IMPOSSIBLE to have occurred naturally.

Amber nodded "I suspect Ozpin is watching us and the other Ungifted closely, and is calling off another counter-exploitation like that Ursa pack earlier. We need to pick up the pace heading north, or be ready for a teacher to ambush us if they really took your statement seriously."

"I'm wondering if you have any extra armour you might be willing to lend me, for the outside of my upper arms at least?" Nutmeg looked toward the bandages over the shallow scratches on her upper arms, since her body armour was limited to vest, gauntlets, and reinforced boots, unlike Amber's power armour suit which was almost certainly custom-designed, based off of some existing schematic or another. Nutmeg knew she was good at computer coding, so she could have most likely obtained one-generation-out-of-date schematics for armour machinery if she sought to do as Amber did. However, for actual engineering… she'd need to ask for Amber's help improving her equipment.

On the subject of spare plating, Amber shook her head in response, since she didn't bring spare plates big enough to matter, only a couple bottles of patch sealants. Nutmeg sighed and shrugged, before picking up the pace slightly, thinking…

This wasn't like Vacuo anymore, where she chose every engagement against the Grimm in freeform Hunting excursions. At Beacon they'd actually be sent out to do specifically missions, which meant she needed to toughen up. She could do without the thrusters Amber packed though as there was no way she'd be able to afford neural adaptors of sufficient complexity unless she went down Amber's route of using a limb external adaptor. Getting implants was out of the question in case they could generate nervous system feedback when hit by EMP or something.

Soon they came upon a forest clearing with a dead King Taijitu in it. For reasons unknown, almost certainly related to the Church of Ohm which began as a faith shortly after the First Grimm War, these things had been known since the emergence of the Grimm by the slang term "Monty Pythons". Pythons were a common, much smaller snake type that liked to nest in meadows and Monty was an unknown, possibly cultural figure from pre-Grimm history, which had been basically completely lost during the First Grimm War. "This was left by someone who actually got launched properly instead of basically mostly gliding down from the cliff." The brunette noted.

"These giant snake-things been weaned off of the instinct to try to bite things that fly at them slowly yet?" Because throwing satchel charges at them was really too easy. However, they seem to have learnt over the decades to at least try to dodge projectiles moving toward their mouth at faster speeds, though of course they needed to be slow enough to be seen, so rockets were less efficient.

Nutmeg blinked "Explosive packets hard-counter them in Mistral too?"

"You'd think they'd be considered less difficult for Hunters to kill based on that fact, and how killing one head by more surprising means throws the other's coordination off momentarily." A good sabot through the eye, or a grenade or rocket to the braincase region in general tended to resolve it easily enough during its time of adjustment "It doesn't get the time to transfer control consciously like if you cut it off or something that it sees coming, so it gets momentarily confused." Amber shrugged "Then again the more dangerous and harder-to-kill Grimm should actually be more common by what they say in classes about them being born from malice randomly. Therefore, King Taijitus should not actually count as all that tough unless you're really under-prepared… unless of course they actually breed like normal organisms, in which case the distribution we actually see makes sense ecologically."

* * *

"Thank goodness those girls can keep their mouths shut about moneymaking secrets and other such things." Ozpin muttered to himself. Otherwise they surely would have been assassinated long ago for being too damned good at slaughtering Grimm without relying on Aura, and for digging through the bullshit fed to them in classes. There were many things the ruling families, all Aura-using to maximize their advantages, and all befitting the stereotype of the Beautiful Elite, would not tolerate. They barely tolerated the overly adaptive among the Aura-wielders, the Faunus, who were forced into subservience at best and slavery at worst despite often being kin. They were useful after all for jobs that Ungifted had to be barred from to keep them dependent on Aura-users, but which the ruling families would not risk any of their own for.

An upstart and more importantly Ungifted peasant tearing down the reliance and complacency so carefully cultivated among the chattering classes on the Hunters… that would never fly. Why else would it be the case that, right after Mistral was forced by public pressure to expand into the massive cleared space next to their main walls, Stone suffered that landslide on a mission? It was admirable that after Nikos dug her out, dragged her back to safety and she recovered, that she would still seek to come here, but it was also incredibly foolish. To fail to defend such an easily defended area would make Mistral seem unacceptably weak internationally and to its own populace, so they were forced to tolerate the additional living space.

Ozpin had watched many students pass through these halls, Aura-users and Ungifted (the few brilliant enough to make it here without being dealt with, terminally) alike and be consumed by the machinery of power. He had had high hopes before, for the Ungifted known as The White Fire, and on the Aura-using side for whole generations of the Silver Eyes before and after her. He had hoped those young ones then, and these children now, might break the cycle, break the shackles on him and all humanity, break the looming threat of the Grimm over them all as mankind was more than capable of… but this was all the wishful thinking of an old man…

But perhaps… well, this generation maybe was less oblivious to the obvious complacency, the obvious mental walls that were created by the Kingdoms' (though that was a misnomer) walls. Ozpin could hope, right? At least, the ruling councils hadn't taken that away from him…

* * *

 **A/N: You have now been made aware of the main conflict that this series lead up to. Now you must watch how it builds up and try to puzzle the future path of events out from each step of the story. After all, it is the journey of life that matters** , not the destination (everything that lives is born to die)…

Depending on Pyrrha's survival (feel free to vote on that matter, though I am strongly biased toward "yes, she is not obsessed with being a heroic martyr this time around"), Amber may or may not openly align with Cinder and Salem's side eventually against the current ruling class. This is not just a matter of humanity vs. the Grimm, but for various moral reasons we will meet as we proceed into _Men of Iron_.

Humor in my writing is as common as shit on a pasture… not everywhere per se, but you always get at least a whiff of it wherever you go. For example, if I ever wrote a Naruto crack fic, you can be assured that Might Guy (localization FTW) will have at least one Ninjutsu named some variation of "TASTE THE RAINBOW" in his exclusive "Good Guy Techniques".

REVIEW PLEASE!


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